These publishers only speak one language: Money.
If you buy a game with always-online DRM, you are telling them that you are ok with that. If SimCity doesn't sell well, EA will notice. If it does sell well, however, what they won't notice are the complaints and discussions on the internet. Ok, they might notice that, but why would they care? They'll already have our money.
The problem is that they can push this form of DRM with big names like Diablo 3, SimCity and other AAA titles. We waited over 10 years for an overhyped Diablo 3, we don't care about anything anymore. Just wanna play the game. OMFG D3 is here! Must buy limited 100$ pre-order edition with extra shit I don't need! Because it's fucking Diablo! Blizzard! Well, it's not Blizzard anymore. It's Activision. Then the game turns out to be buggy, unfinished and we can't even play the singleplayer mode as a pre-order customer, because their servers can't handle the traffic. But we take it anyway, despite there being Torchlight 2 which is basically a consumer-friendlier version of Diablo 3 for 20$. That's how they fool us.
I'm not aware of any alternative for SimCity. That game looks pretty amazing, imho. But I won't buy it. I can't buy it, because I'm not ok with their DRM and business practices.
And if there is no other similar game avaible, tough. I'm not that desperate.
If you buy a game with always-online DRM, you are telling them that you are ok with that. If SimCity doesn't sell well, EA will notice. If it does sell well, however, what they won't notice are the complaints and discussions on the internet. Ok, they might notice that, but why would they care? They'll already have our money.
The problem is that they can push this form of DRM with big names like Diablo 3, SimCity and other AAA titles. We waited over 10 years for an overhyped Diablo 3, we don't care about anything anymore. Just wanna play the game. OMFG D3 is here! Must buy limited 100$ pre-order edition with extra shit I don't need! Because it's fucking Diablo! Blizzard! Well, it's not Blizzard anymore. It's Activision. Then the game turns out to be buggy, unfinished and we can't even play the singleplayer mode as a pre-order customer, because their servers can't handle the traffic. But we take it anyway, despite there being Torchlight 2 which is basically a consumer-friendlier version of Diablo 3 for 20$. That's how they fool us.
I'm not aware of any alternative for SimCity. That game looks pretty amazing, imho. But I won't buy it. I can't buy it, because I'm not ok with their DRM and business practices.
And if there is no other similar game avaible, tough. I'm not that desperate.